Joined by her American Spaniel Charlie, Brooklyn-based artist Joyce Pensato introduces her vast, paint-spattered studio and local laundromat, captured by director John Strong in Joyceland. The Guggenheim fellow’s paintings reappropriate such well-known characters as Felix the Cat, Donald Duck and Homer Simpson. “I love Donald, he can express every emotion, Mickey too,” says Pensato of her famous muses. “Felix is the bad boy, Homer is very thoughtful. Batman is strong, mysterious and tough. Hardcore.” She was recently exhibited at the Santa Monica Museum of Art for her first major museum show and was last year’s recipient of the Robert De Niro, Snr. award, founded in 2010 by the Hollywood actor in tribute to his late father. Not content with the restrictions of canvas, these iconic characters have filled her home and studio in the form of countless stuffed figures and associated ephemera, providing today's film with a fuzzy, idiosyncratic backdrop. “I love discarded toys with a history and a past,” she says of her hoard. “The collection has become my crew and made my world.”